1 - Add a few slot to create custom formations and force ship AI to stick to the formation regardless of individual speed acceleration <stick to lowest in active formation>

its a must have because of all the LOS issue, how many times i had ships just shoot at my own because it was in front of it, or that ship wont even fire because he has big ship in front

Formation would really help developing efficient fleet designs right now only missile dont have problem with LOS but projectile that often have spread tend to be an issue to make proper formation to benefit from a clear LOS to shoot

Formation may it be style 1 or 2 need to be implemented especially to make clever use of all the fleet and AOE style modules like nebula/extended shield/fleet jump/nebula so on

+ some Engineering cleverly places to provides Nebula/fleet jump, but those can be very hard to place properly with all ai, fleet formation issue right now. if i could create a formation to put all ships where they need to be in order to make tactical fleet jump and nope just HOPE that no one moved out of the relatively small AOE and got left behind <be it if i warp in or out>

i found fleet jump and nebula the absolute best counter to OP laser builds, but i do need my fleet to stay in formation at any time or its pointless.

2 - If not custom, then at least create a few standard formation spearhead, claw, circle so that at least we dont always have to manually place each of the ship <you could check Homeworld for nice formation ideas>

Improve player ships AI, add an auto face/engage to ship, its annoying to have ships with limited fire angle stay idle and being shoot at without them even retaliating if i dont manually give them the order.<ship AI and path finding is already clunky as is and also often more than none result in annoying collision between my own ships, or sometimes you dont know why your ship going at full speed into asteroids or stations>

if i double click a ship design <understand frigate/cruiser so on> would be nice if it could select all ship of the same size

Add the Rotation selection when you move you ship if you long press destination instead of having to manually add it after with Shit + R + rotation and click to validate if formation are implemented all ships in formation should also follow general formation direction <check how units move in say Total war>

Make shield regen a relevant stat, right now it feels absolutely useless, should be able to regen IN combat even when taking damage and not just when out combat especially considering the insane cost in energy for shield regen modules.

as of now
Large shield is 3*1 and gives 1500 for a cost of 92 energy
Advanced Shield Regen gives 25 regen OUT OF COMBAT for a cost of 300 energy ???

Who in their right mind will spend 300 energy for something you can benefit only outside of combat and at such small amount
even if you take only 1 large shield and 1 advanced regen it will still take over a whole minute to regen full shields, its better to just put another shield to get 3000 and to hell with the regen

OR
Decrease significantly costs and at least double or triple the base regen rate including in combat
which make it equally powerful regardless of total shield

on a second note doing so will obviously increase efficiency against people spamming incredible amount of laser that otherwise burn your shields in literally split seconds with no chance to counter them after they are down due to absolute useless regen right now. which will force heavy energetic weapon users to slot some EMP mod/mines or shield disabler mods to be effective instead of just mindlessly spamming laser across the map